President Obama and Israel: Looming confrontations

CANDIDLY SPEAKING: The US and Europe are desperate for a face-saving situation to avoid confrontation with the Iranians.

Obama at White House 370.
(photo credit:REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

One might have hoped that Obama’s calamitous mishandling of recent Middle East
crises, climaxing with his disastrous response to the Syrian use of chemical
weapons, would have taught him a few lessons on regional
politics.

Regrettably his address to the United Nations General Assembly
last week proved otherwise. By reverting to his original Cairo speech –
insisting that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian peace “would have a
profound and positive impact on the entire Middle East and North Africa” – Obama
has caused many Israelis to question not merely his competence, but also his
real intentions toward Israel.

The notion that the stability of the
entire Middle East region hinges on the resolution of the Israeli- Palestinian
conflict is utterly absurd. Our conflict has no bearing on the complex and far
more problematic conflicts and pressure points surrounding us: the struggle
between Sunnis and Shi’ites; the resurgence of al-Qaida; the rise of the Muslim
Brotherhood; the persecution and murder of Christians throughout the Muslim
world; the threat of a nuclear Iran; the chaos in Libya and Yemen; the upheavals
in Egypt; the global Islamic terror attacks extending from New York to Iraq,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali, and most recently Kenya; and above all, the carnage
in Syria. To place responsibility for regional stability on Israel in the midst
of this chaos is a terrible misreading of reality.

To compound matters,
Obama linked the Iranian nuclear threat and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
treating them with equal importance – a clear signal that the US expects Israel
to make major concessions to the Palestinians in return for “undertakings” to
prevent the Iranians from obtaining a nuclear bomb.

Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu must have been bitterly disappointed. He has bent over
backward in efforts to please Obama. At Obama’s urging, he extended a
humiliating apology to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the
killing of the Turkish terrorists seeking to violently breach Israel’s maritime
arms blockade against Gaza. Yet when Erdogan subsequently refused to fulfill his
undertakings, Obama failed even to reprimand him.

Netanyahu outraged most
Israelis by capitulating to extreme US pressure and releasing Palestinian
terrorists, many of whom were mass murderers.

He also encouraged AIPAC to
support the president in Congress on the Syrian issue – an act that backfired
after Obama equivocated and then withdrew his request for congressional
support.

Yet Obama disregarded all Netanyahu’s efforts and once again
left him in the cold. Ignoring the asymmetry of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, he complimented both parties for “having demonstrated a willingness to
take significant political risks” – explaining that Israel had released large
numbers of hard-core terrorists (an act that no US government would conceivably
contemplate) and bracketing this with the reciprocal Palestinian “concession”:
to engage in negotiations with the Israelis! Does he really believe that Israel
releasing mass murderers and the Palestinians consenting to engage in
negotiations amount to equivalent political risks? When Obama glibly proclaimed
that “friends of Israel, including the United States, must recognize that
Israel’s security as a Jewish and democratic state depends upon the realization
of a Palestinian state,” he ignored the dangers Israel would face if, as is
almost certain, Palestine became a failed rogue state and served as a launching
pad for terrorists and states like Iran committed to Israel’s
destruction.

Nor did Obama even mention the visceral hatred and
incitement to violence that continues to be promoted at all levels of PA
society, making genuine peace inconceivable.

Obama’s desperate renewed
“appeal” to the Iranians, pleading with them to engage in dialogue and foolishly
reiterating that he did not consider regime change an objective was also
profoundly disappointing.

The new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in
stark contrast to his deranged predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has launched an
extraordinary charm offensive. Cynically oozing goodwill, he has referred to the
employment of nuclear weapons as a crime against humanity and sought to divert
attention from the Iranian nuclear threat by demanding that Israel join the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with other “enlightened” states like Iraq,
Syria and Libya.

With a forked tongue, he has conveyed reassuring
messages, encouraging protracted negotiations.

It should be recalled that
in 2005, while serving as national security adviser and head nuclear negotiator,
Rouhani brazenly lied concerning Iran’s genuine nuclear intentions. And just
prior to departing for New York, he was photographed speaking at a military
parade in front of a sign that read “Israel must cease to exist.”

Nor,
despite all his sweet talk, has Rouhani offered a single concession. Clearly he
is eager to talk and negotiate. But unless the ayatollah decides otherwise, the
centrifuges will continue spinning until Iran achieves its nuclear
objective.

Meanwhile, sensitive to his master Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or a
backlash from his hardline opponents in Iran, Rouhani humiliatingly spurned a
pathetic US effort to orchestrate an “impromptu” handshake at the UN, stating
that it would be premature. That did not deter Obama from telephoning him as he
was about to leave for Iran, congratulating him on his election and praising his
“constructive statements” on the nuclear issue.

The US and Europe are
desperate for a face-saving situation to avoid confrontation with the
Iranians.

They ignore the ultimate result of the buildup of underground
nuclear facilities and ballistic missiles.

Furthermore, the bitter
reality is that after Obama’s inept zigzagging in relation to Syria, his threat
that the US is “determined to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb” and
will if necessary “use all elements of our power, including military force,”
rings hollow and is unlikely to be taken seriously by the Iranians – or anyone
else.

It must be deeply frustrating for Netanyahu to see the rogue state
of Iran courted by the US and Europe, while Israel, a democracy and genuine ally
of the US, is treated so shabbily. The chilling parallels with the betrayal of
Czechoslovakia and Chamberlain’s policies of appeasement and “peace in our time”
during the late 1930s will prey on our minds in the months to
come.

Netanyahu will seek to pierce through Rouhani’s sweet talk at the
UN. He will raise skepticism about Rouhani’s tactics and urge the world to
prevent the Iranians from emulating the North Koreans, who achieved their
nuclear objectives by similar means.

He will also demand full
transparency and verification, should any agreement be reached with Iran. For
these expressions of objective reality and bare security necessities, he will
undoubtedly be depicted as a spoiler by naive and euphoric US and global leaders
seeking justification for their inaction against Iran.

He will also
resist pressures from the Obama administration for additional fundamental
unilateral concessions to the Palestinians. But unlike his political opponents
on the Right accusing him of cowardice, Netanyahu – like all Israeli leaders
since the time of Ben-Gurion – realizes that Israel is dependent on a superpower
and that today the support of the US both politically and militarily is
crucial.

Netanyahu also recognizes that for all his failings, Obama, with
the strong encouragement of Congress, continues to provide Israel with the
military necessities that no other nation could provide.

Israel has a
vested interest in a strong America employing its superpower status to maintain
global stability. We are not obliged to behave as a vassal state. But we must
act prudently. While resisting pressures to concede on matters impacting our
security, we must demonstrate our appreciation of American support and be
willing to make concessions on issues that Americans perceive as impacting their
interests.

The next nine months will be challenging, especially if Obama
retains his fixation that he can resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by May
2014.

There is no basis for any realistic settlement beyond an interim
arrangement. Even aside from Hamas and the extraordinary turbulence in the
region, it is inconceivable that an agreement could be achieved concerning
issues such as the Arab refugee right of return. If Abbas himself were willing
to compromise (and he is not), he would be assassinated within a matter of
days.

This is a time for our leaders, including President Shimon Peres
and the Likud hawks, to stand united.

Repeated statements refuting the
positions adopted by the prime minister, calling for annexation of territories
or opposing a two-state solution, undermine our global position. Such behavior
enables the Palestinians to distort reality and shift the blame to Israel for
the inevitable breakdown that will result from their intransigency and refusal
to coexist genuinely with us.

It is unconscionable that even during this
turbulent period, with the upheavals in Syria and Egypt, the Obama
administration blinds itself to the real barriers to peace and exploits the
Iranian nuclear threat as a vehicle to pressure Israel to maintain this
Alice-in-Wonderland negotiation charade. By demanding that we make further
unilateral territorial concessions in the absence of ironclad security (which is
currently impossible), the US is pressuring us to gamble with our lives and
future.The writer’s website can be viewed at
www.wordfromjerusalem.com.

He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com

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